no serious economist would argue that mexico has a comparative advantage in slave labour. it's a contradiction in terms to use low labour standards as a comparative advantage in the context of free trade; you would need to have that discussion in the context of mercantilism, which is indeed what nafta was designed as.

so, what the article is actually arguing is that labour standards threaten to allow for an even playing field which may allow for actual free trade - which is not what the publication wants.

what is a comparative advantage? it's when a country can make more profit trading for a good than it can producing it, so it focuses on producing something else in order to trade for that good. i know that sounds like a weird definition, but it's how the term is used in actual parlance. there's less focus on what you have a comparative advantage in, and more focus on what you have a comparative disadvantage in.

and, what is free trade? it's when we all acknowledge these comparative advantages, and recognize the logic in abolishing the anarchy in production that comes from ignoring them. free trade is actually fundamentally a decision to not compete in markets you have a disadvantage in, and rather forfeit it to those that have the advantage.

mexico has a comparative advantage in lots of things, in the nafta context. one would be bananas. so, it should trade bananas to countries like canada, in exchange for things it can't produce as well, like maple syrup. then, we all have bananas and we all have maple syrup and we're all able to afford it because it's all produced at it's maximum efficiency.

the other option is canadians cursing the weather when their banana crops fail, and mexicans doing snow dances in august.

if you're building a car and want to determine which location has a comparative advantage, you're not supposed to look at wages but at inputs like the cost of steel, the cost of electricty or the abundance of fresh water.

if you reduce the issue solely to labour costs, which are artificially kept low by an oppressive government, you're not talking about comparative advantage but about absolute advantage. and, it is true: mexico has an absolute advantage in the cost of labour, right now. but, what that means is that you shouldn't trade with them at all!

you need something close to common labour standards to even have this discussion. otherwise, you're in an orwellian fantasy, where every day is opposites day - which is what we've all been living in for 30 years.

http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/trudeau-and-trump-both-agree-the-new-nafta-should-screw-over-poor-workers

and, behold: the financial post goes full orwellian dystopia, delving directly into a sea of backkwards newspeak.

i don't have time to disassemble this. but, i'm reminded very now again that i didn't live through this the first time.

what nonsense.

http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/trudeau-and-trump-both-agree-the-new-nafta-should-screw-over-poor-workers

so, i am back to work on this today, and i was hoping i could just get a quick finish for inri26, but i have to remaster the thing, it's not an acceptable sound quality to drop in after doing all of that work on the other tracks from the period.

i have a problem, though: i have virtually no source material for this. what i have is a midi file. i don't have guitar parts, i don't have drum loops...there's nothing...

...which means i can't remove the vocals, either. but, it's not the biggest liability. this will end up on the second vocal comp, but it's no longer an album track, and precisely for that reason: i can't get the vocals out.

when i get through remixing it, i'm going to have a new version along with two failed remasters (one from inricycled b and one from the first inriched, and they both sound awful), a cd rip and the original mp3 from 1999. i'm not going to include all of these tracks on the single, i'll probably just include the mp3 version; it will probably be two tracks.

the weather is still crappy, but i have to get out and do some things this morning. i'll get back to this in the early afternoon. it could be a long day.

after that, i don't think much else is going to require actual production. but, i'm going to listen, too, and see.

inri027 & inri028 are also one track singles, due to the nature of what they are. inri029 cannot be modified due to what it is, which is a conceptual ep - but i'm going to add an alternate version to it as d/l only. inri030 is an ep single from the first disc and is done but needs finalization. that's going to be a little something else.

inri031 should require a little attention....that's the one that does...

inri032 is the covers disc and really can't be touched, and neither can inri033, which is the third official record and the point i need to finish up to before i can ship this guy his first package.

i will at least get ink today. and, if i can finish inri026 before i sleep, i should be able to get through the next chunk pretty quickly.

but, everything else aside, i need to get the subsidized housing bit in today. i can put everything else off except that.

sanders' purpose in the primary was to swing clinton to the left, which is why he picked up so much support.

for clinton to react by complaining - and she really is a whiner, isn't she? - that he was trying to pull her to the left is to state an obvious purposeful truth, and then bray at the moon.

yes, hillary: bernie's entire purpose was to try and shift you to the left. and, had you relented, you might have won.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/politics/cilizza-krieg-convo/?iid=ob_article_footer_expansion

again: cancelling deferred action does not make sense to american capital, which relies on the labour, and will prove deeply unpopular in the long run - which is what trump actually cares about.

trump's rhetoric was never anything more than a way to get the vote out in his base. he was never going to actually do anything like this - it would both be against his own class interests and against his own political interests.

what they're doing is sending it to congress, not abolishing it. that's what obama wasn't able to do, because the republican party had congress locked in a purely obstructionist tactic. now that the republicans have control of the white house, they're going to pass the bills obama wanted to pass in the first place. and, you might see a pattern develop out of this.

obama was always the status quo, corporatist, establishment candidate. the reason he pushed this through in the first place is that it's what the big money interests wanted. trump is not going to turn on those interests, as they are what put him in power and what he represents.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/05/politics/daca-trump-congress/index.html

the weather's kind of crappy today...

...and i think i have a new poop-throwing suspect: it's the husband. he mowed the lawn yesterday and seemed to stop to place objects. i thought he was stealing the citrus release again, but it's still there. the space was clear yesterday, but i picked up 7 clumps this morning after smelling it last night - distributed in a way that seemed designed for maximum annoyance.

it's kind of outrageously obvious - like the eviction notice is.

but, the situation is fundamentally different, now. i don't have the urge to sue that i did, previously; the reason is that i know there's no solution. the reality is that they're brazenly and maliciously harassing me, like the retarded white trash that they are. they're not going to stop if i win the case, so why bother? i'm better off just ignoring it until they sell the building.

...except that it looks like they're going through with the false eviction, so i have to counter-sue.

if i can get them to drop the nonsense around that, i'm really just going to withdraw. i mean, i'll keep taking notes and stuff - it could, in the end, be necessary for a master case. but the way you deal with spoiled children is that you stop feeding into it and then wait until they tire themselves out...

so, it's tuesday morning and i'm picking back up where i let off on friday night.

friday was a bit of an adventure, whereas saturday was a bit more of a normal overnight. i've recently picked up the habit of drinking too much caffeine when i get in and not substantively sleeping when i get home on sunday until monday morning; i slept all day monday.

before i left on friday, i noticed the paralegal had sent me back an email pretending that he didn't know anything about the eviction process. right.

the purpose of the harassment case was not an extractive process, but a vehicle to come up with a way to correct destructive behaviour and end the ongoing pattern of harassment. a settlement is not a solution, but a punishment (the restitution in the case is meaningful, but abstract). what i wanted was a solution, and not a punishment. unfortunately, i felt the need to introduce the court to arrive at a solution, as the property owners were entirely non-cooperative.

the introduction of a paralegal was unexpected (i did not know he would be there until i got there), but it presented a possibility to arrive at a solution without resorting to punishment. that is to say that it's much closer to what i wanted out of the process; what i wanted was a solution, and not a punishment. so, i took that approach.

but, it's now absolutely clear that nobody ever intended to arrive at a solution. so, we need to revisit the court process.

i told the paralegal that he's full of shit, but suggested he can prevent he and his client from a making a fool of themselves by indicating to me that the second part of the form would not be filled. i did not receive a response, so i am planning on mailing on wednesday.

this morning, i need to get to the subsidized housing space and drop off that form, get some printer ink, do some grocery shopping and in the end pick up the forms needed to reopen the case. i'll then get everything mailed tomorrow morning...

so, what's the rationalist read on this?

as should be obvious to most people by now, if it wasn't always, trump's attacks on migrants were always intended to generate votes - throwing people who grew up in the united states out of the country is literally an act of self-harm, by definition. but, the point from trump's perspective is that it has to be a popular decision.

trump is hardly an everyman, but he had some advisors that helped him take advantage of a certain streak of xenophobia with a particularly powerful caveat - it came with mass denial from more moderate voters.

so, you have voter a and voter b. voter a is voting for trump because he's a racist and doesn't give a fuck about anything else (including self-interest), whereas voter b is voting for trump because he has the same class interests (or at least imagines that he does) and in spite of his racial policies, which may leave him a little uneasy.

trump's decision is going to be based on what he thinks is more popular - on what will give him better ratings. and, there are some encouraging signs that he's realizing that cancelling daca would be broadly unpopular with more populous b type voters, while remaining violently popular with a type ones.

i'd like to think trump will take the next six months to do some polling, but you can't be sure with this guy. regardless, that's what he's doing - he's waiting the situation out, and will test the waters early next year to see if the deportation is more popular, all of a sudden.

i wouldn't expect anything to come out of this.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/daca-congress-trump-decision/index.html

want to hear a fun conspiracy theory?

i'm not saying you should take it seriously. i'm just thinking out loud...

obama's period as the grand master will likely be recorded in history as fairly uneventful: a lot of continuity, with the seeming intent to act as a caretaker. due to trump, the long view may be unable to separate obama from bush, relegating obama to a kind of echo of bush. if hillary had won in october, the right historical question would have been why the country bothered voting for obama in the first place; as it is, the bush and obama years are likely to end up merged into bush-obama.

but, there is a specific anomaly in his presidency that will likely live on for a long time in climatological records: there weren't any hurricanes under obama.

it's curious how it played out. we had record temperatures near the end, year over year, but no increase in atlantic hurricanes.

i know, i know: you can't blame the hurricane directly on the carbon. but, we were supposed to have them in increasing intensity and increasing frequency.

i've been wondering for a while if he 'flipped a switch'. which means what?

well, the official rational explanation (tm) no doubt argues that the atmospheric patterns over north america were coincidentally such that they kept large storms offshore. perfectly reasonable.

look at what is happening in houston right now - the storm is being blocked from moving north. and, it could be a lingering coincidence.

but, maybe this new guy flipped the switch back - because it's just a bunch of bullshit anyways, right?

the next guy could always flip it back, again - if there's any record left of it ever existing.

what i'll say is this: i think this curious low in atlantic hurricanes under obama will fascinate scientists for a very long time.

if rate changes don't seriously affect currency prices, what should government do regarding monetary policy?

probably the best way to use monetary policy is as a kind of a distraction to offset other things. so, for example, canada might be concerned that a short-term spike in oil prices might pull the dollar too high. it could manipulate rates to act against that spike and try and smooth out the curve.

yes - i'd define that as currency manipulation. but, it's the best you can hope to do.

the real purpose of a central bank is not to control inflation but to ensure that the state maintains sovereignty over it's money supply.

this is a bunch of nonsense.

junk economics....

the dollar is stronger because oil prices are coming up. the strong spike this week is actually due to the hurricane. and, so long as american policy is tied to increasing oil prices - which appears to be the case - we can expect the canadian dollar to come up.

any effects that the rate hikes have will be self-fulfilling but very short term. that is, the bank can manipulate investors into doing what it wants, but this is just conditioning within a process of mental herding. if you could condition investors to donate money to charity whenever there's a rate hike, they'd do it - but it's just an exercise in propaganda. that would perhaps be a better use of state resources.

it is absolutely true that the country's export industries, which are largely located outside of the west, are in an existential struggle with the country's oil industry and that if it weren't for depleting resources it might be reasonable to predict dissolution over it. canada was intended to be an economic union; it's purpose hinges on the plausibility of economic co-operation and mutual well-being.

for now, you should expect the dollar to continue to rise - regardless of what the feds do.

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canadian-dollar-briefly-surges-past-81-cents-as-economy-booms/article36151461/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&

the article is repeating the debunked neo-liberal dogma about rate hikes, which in fact have no effect on inflation at all.

they don't even mention the oil.

the purpose is to back up the point that the inflation is actually happening.

https://www.ft.com/content/8e70bf6b-bed1-3490-894a-296972c29a51

this is probably mostly about the canadian government trying to avoid looking like it's picking on mexico.

in canada, we neither have statistically large numbers of spanish speakers nor significant numbers of people with (recent) african ancestry (we're all africans...). our largest non-white ethnic groups are from south and east asia; everything's english/french bilingual, but if we were to add a third language, it would be cantonese or punjabi rather than spanish, which is probably something more like 8th. although we do have ethnic districts (i can think of sikh districts, italian districts and ukrainian districts, specifically) there is probably nowhere in canada where an urbanized spanish-speaking constituency holds any real political power. we have chinatowns and little italies and growing arabic neighbourhoods, but we don't have mexicantowns - although there is one in detroit.

so, the realities on the ground are very different, politically. the spanish-american political organizations that are so central to politics across the american south really don't exist here. our government doesn't have that pressure point. but, the neo-liberal left being what it is today, this government is exceedingly concerned about producing race optics that could be manipulated against them. there's a broad consistency, there, in going out of their way to ensure that they do not look like they're racist.

of course, i'm opposed to right-to-work laws - they certainly depress wages. while it's probably not constitutional for the president, or the congress, to pass a federal ban on right-to-work laws, it would certainly be a welcome, if surprising, step from the existing republican party. it's kind of a sandersesque barb, really: if you seriously want to help workers in wisconsin and michigan, it's one of the best things you can do. but it's hardly something worth taking seriously as an honest negotiating position. frankly, it would signal a dramatic spectrum shift, and out of a vacuum: nowhere are there republicans that are agitating for this.

further, it's disingenuous to draw an equivalency. labour law in the united states has certainly been moving backwards for quite a while and needs a course correction, but it is still not remotely comparable to labour law in mexico.

what canada is really doing here is trying it's best to not look racist.

but, what i wanted to talk about was the oil. the globe is not the wall street journal, but it occupies a similar place on bay street, in toronto: it's the paper of choice for torontonian investors, who, like in the united states, are actually pretty liberal, but nonetheless exceedingly wealthy. it's the paper of the laurentian upper class: the well-educated liberals that make up the country's elite.

so, it's not surprising that they forgot to mention the riots happening in mexico due to rising oil prices, as a consequence of the recent "market liberalization" undertaken in the mexican oil sector.

it's true that the mexican police are a violent force that works actively to suppress and silence labour, but suppression has it's limits and is only effective in the presence of certain conditions, the most important, in the mexican example, being the low cost of living in mexico. the storm troopers are useful and everything, but you can only keep wages as low as they are there for any measurable time frame by keeping down the cost of living, which requires controlling inflation. and, contrary to the reigning neo-liberal theory, it is not central banks that control inflation but ultimately the price of oil that does. so, the best way to control inflation is to control the oil sector.

i would like to see it move the other way: i would like to see canada renationalize it's oil sector, which is something we were moving towards in the 70s as a reaction to the oil embargo. we certainly have our own cost-of-living problems here that can be directly tied to lax and ineffective regulations around oil prices which ultimately just reduces to price gouging. but, whether the right-to-work position is genuine or not, we can be certain that nobody is going to propose stronger government regulations around oil prices.

what i'm getting to is that the fact that mexico has had such strong regulations around oil prices has been at the center of it's ability to depress wages: if you keep oil low, you keep inflation down, which controls labour unrest and in turn lets manufacturers keep wages stagnant.

so, what happens when you let the market set the price for oil, then? you get inflation, which creates labour unrest that in turn creates upward pressure on wages. that is actually what is happening right now, as this left populist mayor rides a wave of indignant mass protest over the inflation that the policy is causing.

this is creating a kind of a contradiction. as a leftist, i want to support both of these things: i want public ownership of resources and i also want strong labour movements. but, the best way to build a strong labour movement in mexico is to let the privatization process wreak it's havoc, as a kind of shock doctrine; conversely, a return to nationalized oil will no doubt just perpetuate further stagnant wages, and reinforce the status quo of mexico as the intentional laggard, in the deal. there doesn't appear to be a causal path right now to this ideal outcome of a strong labour movement in control of public resources. it's almost like you have to let mexico go through it's capitalist phase, first, and then have an indigenous middle class take control of it's own sovereignty.

but, on the note of shock doctrines: i'll note that i've also seen recent reports that mexicio is investing heavily in it's police force. this is actually not a brilliant conspiracy on behalf of the mexicans; if they want a return to an easier to control work force, they should just undo the privatization. you can't take people that are already poor, put through policies designed to create inflation and then suppress them with a paramilitary - you will get a civil war out of it, in some abstraction. but, that is what they appear to be doing.

as i've stated here repeatedly, the purpose of nafta was to give american capital a manufacturing option that would allow it to circumvent labour and environmental laws. market liberalization in mexico - especially in the oil sector - actually undermines the purpose of the agreement. but, we've seen a generational overturn bring younger people into power that have only ever understood the effects of the propagandist kool-aid.

market reforms in mexico will undo nafta on it's own - regardless of anything trump does or doesn't do. and, that's what the smart analysis really ought to be focusing around, here.

is nafta even sustainable?

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canada-demands-us-end-right-to-work-laws-as-part-of-nafta-talks/article36160015/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&

sept 2-3, 2017 vlog, where i go to a dead industrial night in mexicantown and then to a populated over night antwon faulkner set in a warehouse. 

also: i ended up in a tree fort, at one point, last night - after i'd been asked to put on a hunter s. thompson costume.

i'll indulge most harmless whims. i'm like that.

and, i had to ponder whether that was a valid empirical metric as to whether a good night was had - if it was perhaps the correct test to apply in an adjudicative process in order to determine objective truth.

she had to talk me into it a little bit, and later claimed she kidnapped me, but in the end i did get into the car. it's about 4:00 am.

"when the genocide was over, i went outside to play in the park with my dad and...."

what.

i guess when you live through things, you need to talk about them sometimes, and you have to talk about them in ways you can concretize. and, these turns of phrase are just communicative necessities. it's just language. just expression.

but, the nonchalant recollection of tragedy can sometimes hit you hard in it's absurdity.

i'm really a sucker for the surreal.

sept 1, 2017 vlog, where i go to a labour day party in hamtramck to see human eye, then get kidnapped by the locals and held in a tree fort, before they released me to my bicycle.

i would like to wait until the eviction process plays itself out before i re-open the file for harassment. that would let me forget about it and do something else for a while. but, i can't actually do that.

as mentioned, i do not think that the paralegal expects the process to go to court: i think he thinks it's leverage to force me out. they'll offer me a few months at mediation, and expect me to take it. it won't matter that it's a fake notice, because it won't go to court. and, if i sue them after, it'll be for the two months they offered me, anyways.

i'll tell you right now that i won't bother mediating an obviously fabricated eviction charge, i'll just get right to ripping it apart in court.

if i can do so effectively, i'll have smoking gun evidence that they were harassing me for the purpose of eviction - which is technically what i sued them for. if i can't, i'll wait until the listing comes up and file for a false eviction notice.

i want the eviction process to go through first, and i want to win the case. but, i need to have the mediation settlement broken before that happens, in case i need to refile after they relist from a distance.

the ideal would be to just wait it out and launch a single, comprehensive process. but, it's not prudent. i need to immediately indicate that the mediation was signed in poor faith.

i did get a disc burned this morning, but i didn't have any ink to print the cover art and i just wasn't awake enough to get to the store to buy some.

i will probably get some ink on sunday. but, it seems like i'm going to have a busy day on monday, in getting all the forms out to the right places and the right items in the right envelopes.

i should be able to ship two packages at a time, as well. it makes more sense to wait until inridiculous is done, anyways.

i know it's somebody's parent.

i know one of them lives upstairs and the other one lives "on oulette", which is at least as close to a hospital, and probably a lot nicer.

this family is wealthy; it's inherited wealth. this is kind of the family reject house - it's the disabled son (it may even be brain damage from a stroke or something, i really don't know), and his retarded daughter (she's more obviously asd, and i suspect likely adhd). they're put away here, kind of thing - taken care of, but out of people's hair.

if i can figure out where this person lives, i can no doubt make an argument for absurdity.

....because i'm sure that mom's place is much nicer. not a little bit sure, either. absolutely certain.

i'm looking through the addresses to include in the subsidized rent form, and it really seems like almost every building in town is offering subsidized rent.

i'm kind of skeptical that the waiting list is going to be too long.

ok. it's true. if i can get a two bedroom apartment on the third or fourth floor with a solid air intake, i'll take it as an improvement. i guess i'm a little older, and there's a few things i'm more picky about.

it's not that i don't like basements - i love basements - it's that i don't like air conditioners, and living in the basement means you're stuck with all of the air conditioners on top of you. if i can get up a little, i can reverse the effect.

being up a few floors also means you can open the window without having to worry about smokers at ground level, or cars i suppose, which is more important to me now than it was a few years ago.

it takes losing access to fresh air to realize how valuable it really is. it's something you take for granted, until it's gone.

i'd also like to be a little closer to the downtown core so i have easier access to the tunnel and i'm not missing the bus every time i go to detroit. i'm a concrete jungle type - i don't have much attachment to green spaces. they just end up full of cat shit. i like sidewalks and parking lots. sorry.

i still don't want to uproot. non-smokers really need to start standing their ground and not falling into these  strange narratives around "smokers rights", which is just another way to label a license to pollute. but, i'm realizing that i have better options than i thought.

it's a backup plan. and, i'm glad it's there.

there is nothing on the market that would be acceptable to me at this point; anything comparable to this unit is considerably outside of my price range. it just stresses the importance of standing my ground in the face of persistent harassment, and letting the system come to a correct conclusion in the face of fraudulent reports.

the sad reality surrounding the whole thing is that they won't be able to rent this unit to anybody in the long term. the basement is full of cockroaches. the odours are terrible: cigarettes in the hallways, sewer gas in the back space and pollution from the windows most of the year. when you can get some fresh air, you have to deal with nuisance cats shitting everywhere and neighbours chain smoking in their driveway. you can imagine the kind of undesirable that this wouldn't bother: maybe a 45 year old single male that chain smokes, lives on welfare and is drunk most of the time.

i was told the previous tenant had to end their tenancy because they were sent to jail.

there's essentially no insulation in the back wall. so you have to deal with the air conditioner upstairs in the summer and the basement draft in the winter. if they succeed in converting the unit to gas and the tenancy to paid utilities, paying rent here will mean you're heating the entire basement, and most of the upstairs - because he doesn't turn his heat on unless it's -20. so, the basement tenant is essentially going to be paying heating costs for the entire building.

the tenant they're looking to attract is consequently going to be a low-income chain smoker that doesn't mind living in filth and is willing to overpay for utilities for no apparent reason i can see. i hear he rides a unicorn to church.

i am the best they will get. at least the old guy realized that. i guess he had a little experience with the previous tenants down here, and what a unit like it is able to attract.

i am going to take a precautionary step, though: i am going to apply for subsidized housing. and, i am going to claim that i am in an abusive situation, because i am.

i should have been put in subsidized housing years ago. i mean, i'm on permanent disability, it's what the program is for. i applied for it in ottawa, but i wasn't able to stay with my grandmother long enough to wait it out and had to leave the city, instead. they eventually approved me, but i was already here, and it didn't make the slightest bit of sense to go back.

i've been here long enough now that i can apply, here. i don't know how long it will take...

...but it's really the only way out of this that i can put a positive spin on: i could conceivably get a comparable space, and actually end up with a reduced price. and, good luck to them getting somebody else in here.

but, i'm going to stand my ground. i'm going to make them prove the case. because i presume that they can't. and, everything aside, i don't want to leave.

i just hate moving. if i could snap my fingers, i'd take myself up to a third or fourth floor apartment with windows that open to fresher air and walls that keep the neighbours' a/c out. but, getting from a to b isn't worth it. i'd rather stay here and hold my ground.

i need to state again that i do not intend to leave windsor until i complete my discography because i will not be able to afford the space required to hold my gear much of anywhere else. i could have been done by now, but i've wasted much of the last two years on nonsense. if i leave for waterloo, which is my most likely next destination, i will probably sell my gear before i go.

the idea of moving to waterloo is to shift from an artistic purpose to an academic (mathematical) one. i could very well end up living in the library for a while. but, i was not expecting to end up in waterloo until i hit my mid-40s or early 50s. i'll likely be in windsor for another 10-15 years before i move on.

i intend to eventually end up in the northern end of the province, in my twilight years.

i will not end up back in ottawa, unless it is homeless and penniless and in the short term, before i move away again. i simply cannot afford to live in the city.

so, i woke up to an eviction order - signed hours after the mediation process - that i needed to leave so that a parent could move in.

which one? the obese man's ex-wife?

does she like cockroaches?

they can do this in ontario. sort of. they have to demonstrate a need to put the parent there, which is probably going to be difficult. they can't just decide that they're going to stick mom in there for a year for the fun of it, they have to have a good reason. and, it has to be true, in the first place.

they have the burden of proof to demonstrate it, and they can expect a rigorous cross-examination.

frankly, even if they do have a parent to move in, and they need to, it's going to be hard for them to convince a judge that they just forgot to tell me that in mediation and that this has nothing to do with the last several months of harassment. so, we have bad faith on two levels:

1) the mediation agreement was arrived at in bad faith, and is consequently void.
2) the eviction order was provided in bad faith, and will fail. in fact, i think it's toothless: it's an intimidation tactic. i don't expect it to actually go to court. it's just supposed to scare me into moving.

i was hoping to push this forward into september. but, they broke the agreement in less than 24 hours.

again: was i fool to put it off? the answer is no: this would have happened anyways. putting the file on hold did not lead to a fake eviction notice, they would have done it anyways. but, it does allow me to put the harassment proceedings - and the fake eviction notice will be a part of them - into a single case, which both makes me seem less interested in conflict (which is true.) and less interested in financial gain (which is also true.). in the long run, it just strengthens my argument that there is a pattern of consistent harassment.

if anybody is capitalizing, it is the paralegal, who appears to be more interested in taking advantage of clueless property owners than building his own reputation. and, if i made an error it was in hoping for good faith from a lawyer. the ideal outcome remains in helping these people better understand what the law says; unfortunately, this guy seems like he wants to just take advantage of them.

i am going to have to spend some time in the next few days looking at moving options, as a backup plan, but that will not void any of the legal proceedings - including the inevitable filing of a false eviction claim, which i can theoretically file after moving. if that ends up happening, it will pay for the process. i don't expect my options to be very good (to avoid moving backwards, i will need to find a two bedroom all-inclusive apartment for less than $700/month - and, remember, i am legally incapable of working), but i have to explore them.

if i were to move out, and i saw that they relisted the apartment, re-opening the file under that premise would be a very strong argument: months of harassment culminating in a fake eviction notice would indeed land me a sum. and, if i'm moving out, i'll take it.

i need to do some cleaning tonight, and then get a few things mailed in the morning. i'll take a look at this over the next few days, with the aim to mail some things on monday.

aug 29-30 vlog, where i prepare the case against the landlord for harassment, go to court and withdraw, with the hope that the issue might resolve.

if they want this to end, it's really simple: all they have to do is leave me alone.

i actually put this truth in the court documents: even if i were to walk out of the court room with the full settlement (which has now inched up to 4679.46), we'd still have to find a mediation process, afterwards, or i'm just going to take them to court every month.

i even offered to give some of it to charity. it's really not the point.

that number can keep growing. the bigger it gets, the larger a fraction of it gets, too. it can eventually get to a point where i shouldn't expect to see it, even if i win it. but, that's fine, because it's not the actual answer to anything.

the preferred answer was an epiphany. i was hoping i could help. sure, it's still possible. right now, the right answer is a legal mentor to get them to follow common sense legal principles - to tell them when they're fucking up and tell them not to.

that is infinitely more valuable to me than an unending court battle that i keep winning.

they fucked up within hours: i have two more examples of harassment, just this evening.

but, things are different, now: i have a paralegal that has at least taken a couple of courses to run it through, and he has to tell his clients whether or not these things are worth doing.

they are minor concerns, in isolation: removing an air freshener from my window sill, changing the speed of the fan that i won by court order so that it's barely working. neither of these actions cost me anything. more importantly, refraining from these actions doesn't cost the landlord anything - but carrying them out could cost her a whole lot.

any decent paralegal should look at the situation and say the following,

"well, jessica is correct: you cannot be vandalizing her window sill, as it is an extension of her living space. anything on the sill is her property. removing an item from the window sill is the same thing as removing an item from her apartment. and, she won the court order on the fan, too, so you should basically never touch it, for any reason. if these situations were one-offs, this would be a waste of time. but, they are part of a pattern of harassment that could land you in a lot of trouble. this isn't worth fighting, and this isn't worth doing. you should sign the paper - and you should leave the fan alone, and leave items on her window sill alone, too."

that is dramatically more productive from my perspective than getting into a stupid shouting match and dragging the thing to a judge.

but, i don't expect this to evaporate tomorrow. it's going to be the paralegal's responsibility for the near future to get these people to start acting like grown-ups. it could take a long time. but, in the long run, if the behaviour is slowly corrected, the issue is resolved.

otherwise, we go back to court within weeks - and i'll do it, because it's the pattern that matters, not the precise issue.

i gave them another chance...

.....to fuck up.

well, it's kind of true.

what i did was put the case on hold in order to deal with a paralegal. it's easy enough to scoff at me: i gave them a chance to get a lawyer involved? am i daft? or just imbued with gentlemanly concepts of fair play? but, it's actually better in the long run.

see, i'm far better off giving them as many chances as i can, like a tiger playing with a kill, than i am in trying to devour them multiple times. i'm going to get annoying if i take this to a judge every few weeks, and i want to avoid seeming aggressive: i am, after all, suing for harassment. i'm the victim, here. it needs to be unambiguous. i'm more likely to get a big settlement if it's at the end of incredible patience than i am if it looks like i'm coming back for seconds and thirds like a greedy glutton.

beyond tactical considerations, i'm actually genuine: what i want is for the shenanigans to end at no cost to me. it is perhaps true that the root cause of the problem is that they're all so legally clueless. perhaps a good deal of this would not have happened if they had sought proper legal advice. so, there is some reason to think that putting a lawyer between us could have a seriously positive effect.

also, i'm intuitive enough to realize that what this paralegal really wanted was to avoid the court date out of fear of being beaten by an amateur. the truth is that i actually intimidated him. he's not going to shape up in the course of weeks or months, but he may give the case less formlessness, and actually make it easier to sue as a consequence.

i actually hope that this is the end of it; they gave me back the $50 filing fee, but left me on the hook for the other $40 i spent on paper and mailing costs. i'd be surprised if it is; i should be able to add those costs on to the next date.

if i refile i can add all of the things that have happened since july 20th as further examples - at no extra cost - and increase the fine to six or potentially seven months at a better probability of winning and potentially with better evidence.

i'm sleepy. but i'll be getting to better and more productive things when i wake up.

so, i went to make a smoothie this afternoon, in the thunderstorm, and came back to a laptop with a dead processor.

this is the same laptop that was previously having electrical problems. and, i noticed that it was seizing up a little bit, this afternoon - so it didn't come totally out of nowhere.

once again, though, this laptop fails in co-ordination with my living room desktop, which went into the loop for the first time since replacing the hard drive. i don't know what that loop actually is, but i've designed the system around the need to reinstall to get rid of it. it may actually be a network virus. what's extra curious is the correlation: i seem to be getting periodic attacks by some kind of intelligence network that take everything down at the same time.

i vlog! i blog! i give you information for free!

oh, and my phone came in the other day, but don't expect me to actually use it any time soon :P. not now, with all these priorities...and, certainly not the way anybody expects. at least it's there though, right? have fun with it.

and, no, i'm not blaming the russians. i understand that the russians actually have extremely limited cyberwarfare capabilities, and are simply not technologically advanced enough to do much of anything they're currently being accused of. if i was attacked by a rogue intelligence gathering service, it was almost certainly by the good old cia. i don't think i'm very interesting to the chinese or the israelis, which are the only other serious operations running.

the storm is a good cover, right? hey - explain why everything all comes down at once, then.

nonetheless, occam's razor is to ignore the sputtering this morning and just blame it on the storm. did i get a surge? well, the power didn't actually go out, although i do think that i had a close lightning strike. but, nothing else in here got fried, and this laptop was actually on one of the better protected circuits. it doesn't quite add up; i'm not convinced.

given that i had all of the windows open, i actually think it may be more likely that the static electricity in the air got to it and shut it off as it was running hot. that would be terrible luck, basically. i've tried some dry boots and it's not working; i get the caps lock single flash, and it just shuts down. so, i'm going to have to let it sit and drain itself for a week or two. if i can fix it easily, it will be by unplugging it for a while.

for now, i swapped the drive out and am back on the backup laptop, as i was over the course of may and june. i hope it doesn't take as long to come back...

...but, even if it comes back sooner, i'm thinking i'll stick on this machine as a short term access point and go ahead and install the new drive in the other machine, which is what i was planning on doing shortly, anyways. that's what i'm going to be doing for editing in the long run.

if it doesn't come back, should i buy a new processor? i'm not confident about disassembling it. so, i might buy a new stripped down laptop (not necessarily the same model), actually, and just put the new components in it. i mean, i just bought a new hard drive and 8 gb of new ram or this: it should be running a fast sshd with 8 gb of ram. the optical drive works. if i can just get a barebones board/screen/case combo for $50 and then upgrade it with my new components, it will justify the existing investment and really be a helluva calculator. i've already spent around $200 on it, so i'm not just going to discard it - i'll find a way to reintegrate this component, one way or another.

but, am i getting fed up with it? sure. i'll give it a week or two to come back and then move on.

so, i'm probably on this machine for a good while. i haven't taken it up to 4 gb of ram yet but will soon. and, that should make it more than sufficient as an access point until i get around to reconstructing the studio.

that was a messy weekend. i found myself on a pcp buzz (i need to stop just smoking and/or eating whatever random thing anybody gives me - this was laced pot, i've been through it repeatedly and know it when i get it, it was a specific trip. i even know who i smoked it from, as i could taste it. it's a burnt taste, like hashish, but more intense) after actress, and stuck outside the bar until 5:00 am. again: i wasn't actually drunk. i didn't pass out, and i didn't vomit. i was just inoperable due to the high. in fact, i could have walked somewhere, and no doubt would have if i didn't have my bike, but i decided against bicycling until the buzz passed. safety first. well, i would have just sat outside the diner, anyways, right? i could sit outside the bar and smoke or sit outside the diner and smoke, what's the difference? as before, it took a while longer than i expected, but i caught the early bus, in the end.

saturday was even weirder, as i didn't get over until 00:30 and found myself at a party that ended at 9:30. i managed to get a lunch hour pizza on the way home, and then took until midnight on sunday to finish eating it. i again think i smoked something that kept me awake. this is the primary argument for legalization: you just really actually don't honestly know what the fuck you're smoking. you really don't. i know i was awake for 36 hours before i feel asleep.

...and that i then slept all day monday, and most of the day tuesday.

i now need to be in court in nine and a half hours, and it will be fine. i've got the information i need compiled and put together. i just need to figure out what i'm printing and what i'm not printing, and plan the rest of the morning around getting there on time.

i've decided that i'm going to wait until i get a ruling before i file a third case. this really isn't a lot of fun, after all. but, the point of this is to get them to stop, not to bankrupt them. if i put them in too difficult a situation, it could actually make it harder to sell the building. and, if i win the case, it could give me the leverage i need to make it stop.

i mean, to be clear: i plan on filing. 5 attempted evictions without cause requires a response. it's just that i'm going to want to do one thing at a time, so i'll give them a chance to respond, first.

http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.ca/2017/08/i-got-large-order-on-saturday-night-11.html

ideally, you want an educated society. it's a necessary condition one way or the other; even voting for representatives requires some understanding of where the representatives stand, so it's kind of just putting the question off. further, brexit had a layer of self-determination attached to it that is very real to average voters. the self-interest of the nation as a whole, measured by the likes of mr. dawkins, may not be the same thing as the perceived self-interest of an individual on the ground.

i would not have voted for brexit. but, britain has historically actually not been a part of europe in any meaningful way - that is a recent idea. if you had have suggested to disraeli or to shakespeare that britain, france and germany would be a part of the same alliance under the same emperor, they would have laughed at you. it is the post-war pax americana that we've all lived all our lives in that is historically absurd and unstable. or, to put it another way - did britain vote to join the eurozone in the first place?

dawkins claims he's unqualified to vote. but, dawkins is a man of formidable intelligence. if he had any self-interest in the outcome, he would educate himself. he is unqualified to vote precisely because the outcome will not affect him in any way. the people the outcome will affect are small business owners and farmers, primarily. their self-interest is not the same as the self-interest of the bourgeois and banking classes - by definition.

none of this changes the premise that the vote was held under conditions where access to information was severely distorted by social media. but, the solution is to argue for greater education, not less democracy. and, it's a little disappointing to see richard dawkins, of all people, miss the point about public education.

aug 26-27th vlog, where i enjoy one more warm weekend for the summer, and finally get the all nighter in i was looking for. 

this is embarrassing.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/propaganda-and-provocation-russia-scoffs-at-canada-s-baltic-war-games-1.4263213

aug 25th vlog, where i go to see actress and get slowed down after the show by what seems like a low iron attack.

i've said this over and over again: the best argument against racism is history.

actually, if you listen to white supremacists, it's clear that even they don't actually believe in it anymore.

the original nazis were all about how superior they were. they wanted to wipe out or enslave all of the other races, to make room for themselves. and, remember: they weren't even white supremacists- they were strictly german nationalists. the french were franks, but they had a real hate on for russians and the british, too. they even thought the poles (who live right next to them and in fact probably founded berlin) were subhuman. they were bellicose, arrogant and certain in their delusions - they were superior, and all others would be defeated by their superior intelligence and superior tactics. naturally.

today, white nationalists are all about protecting the fragility of their endangered race and their threatened culture. they talk of a "white genocide" on the bottom end of an inferiority complex. listening to them talk, it's weird to even call them supremacists at all.

of course, the truth is that they don't understand history: this white race that they've imagined never actually existed. white people probably came from central asia and intermixed with all kinds of indigenous people as they migrated into europe. in the historical period, europe has seen large scale levels of immigration from the middle east and from asia and more recently from africa. the closest thing you're gone to find to a pure white person is probably somebody off the finnish bottleneck, but even they speak an uralic language.

so, you can't even define what they're claiming is superior. what's ever come out of ukraine?

but, if you forget about that, how do you want to do this? if white people are superior, how can they be being exterminated in a genocide? now, ignoring that you can't define white, you have to find a way to define superior. well, if superiority is determined through natural selection, a white genocide suggests white people are not superior. if it's over brawn, it still doesn't work; and, if it's over brain, white people are getting outsmarted, too.

so, what these so-called white supremacists really have is an inferiority complex and a fear of not holding up. what they want is a safe space where they can breed without being polluted, because they know they're too weak to dominate the people around them - like putting a critically endangered species that can't adapt into a wildlife enclosure in a zoo.

it's the reality of it.

the tactic in canada is to slow them down until it's not profitable and they pull out.

this is a step forward.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/08/24/energy-east-pipeline-review-will-include-carbon-emissions-a-first-for-canada_a_23166201/?utm_source

this is somewhat of a surprising position from ashton & caron. the article does a good job of explaining the context, and the idea of quebecois sovereignty being paramount does make sense in a canadian context.

i don't agree with the narrative that the ndp's fall in quebec was about the niqab. the liberals had the same position as the ndp. the article makes more of an attempt to cycle around this by providing a more complex narrative, but i still think it's ultimately flawed. rather, what happened in quebec in the 2015 election was that the bloc pulled enough support away from the ndp to allow the liberals to leapfrog them; the bloc and the ndp split the left-of-liberal vote, and the liberals came up the middle. a lot of these ridings were won with 25-30% support as a consequence of truly competitive four-way races that were almost impossible to predict beforehand, but what i pulled out of the trending was a bloc bump - and that bloc bump was really mere percentage points away from leading to a return of the bloc, which would have also left the liberals with a minority government. that's what i predicted, anyways, and it was really the only error i made (i underestimated liberal seat counts by the amount that i overestimated bloc seat counts, helped by the fact that i saw the ontario sweep coming when nobody else did).

there does remain some possibility that a resurgent bloc could return the liberals to minority status in 2019. this is a far greater threat to the liberals than andrew scheer is. the ndp is a complicated player in this, as they exist between the two parties in multiple ways and can consequently pull support from either party - it is the fight between the ndp and the bloc for the left sovereigntist vote in quebec that will probably determine the outcome of the next election.

attempts to be more appealing to quebec voters are consequently extremely rational.

nor do i agree that quebec's silent revolution is unique to the province, or that canadians outside of quebec have a different viewpoint on this. rather, i'd argue that the western provinces - primarily alberta - are isolated, here, and even that is potentially an overstatement. canada is an overwhelmingly secular society, from coast-to-coast.

what is different about quebec is merely the political dynamic at play, which gives a stronger voice to nationalist parties. but, these nationalist parties are actually comparably tame. if a nationalist party of the sort were to pop up in alberta, it would be of the sort that they are warning against, not the sort they are cautiously accepting under the parameters of quebec sovereignty. nor is it clear that this is outside the realm of realistic probability. ezra levant remains popular on the canadian right; the conservative party's attempt to distance itself from him may potentially even backfire.

but, what the sovereigntist dynamic in quebec allows for is a vehicle to discuss things that does not (currently) exist elsewhere. both error bars are correct here: the spectrum in quebec amplifies voices to emulate the systems that exist in france, while the spectrum in the rest of the country silences those voices. scratch the surface, and you'd be unlikely to find a real difference.

my advice to the ndp was to avoid this. and, you'll note something that the pundits seem to forget: the values charter underlying the debate has actually failed every vote that has been centered around it. quebeckers have, in fact, consistently rejected the values charter. the existing provincial government's mandate is partially based on it's rejection of it!

recent history has demonstrated that the handful of seats that are up for grabs in rural quebec are in fact not worth abandoning the island over.

the best thing to do is to avoid this debate. but, charlie angus has the right electoral strategy, if the goal is to actually win. quebeckers, themselves, do not actually support this.

what do i think about the substance of the policy, though?

well, i'm partial to the idea of banning religious symbols on public service employees - that is crosses or crescents or stars of david. but, here's the thing: the niqab isn't actually a religious symbol. it's a fashion decision rooted in cultural hubris, sure, but it's not actually a part of islam.

...and, i'm opposed to the fashion police.

the constitution isn't likely to uphold any laws of the sort, but they can always use the notwithstanding clause, and no doubt will, as they did with the language laws. but, the fact is that there isn't even a logical connection between upholding a ban on religious symbols and enforcing a ban on niqabs and burqas. it's just not what these things actually are.

they're just scarves. really.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/08/24/ndp-leadership-hopefuls-split-on-religious-rights-in-battleground-quebec_a_23177599/

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/everyone-knows-john-a-macdonald-was-a-bit-of-a-drunk-but-its-largely-forgotten-how-hard-he-hit-the-bottle

"we'd like to welcome you, today, to the boris yeltsin school of international affairs."

i'm going to side with the union.

i can tell you that the right honourable sir john didn't remember much of his own history.

in fact, do you know who the closest contemporary figure to sir john a mcdonald really is, in terms of ideological persuasion? rob ford.

that's right: sir john a. mcdonald was a hopeless drunk and an open racist. and, when he wasn't involved in a massive corruption scheme around building a cross-country railroad, he was pretending to rail against the gravy train.

imagine your great grandkids walking into rob ford public school. well, you shouldn't feel much better about sir john a. mcdonald.

teaching your kids the history is important, but that doesn't have much to do with what you name your school after.

how about this: how about we name our schools after neighbourhoods instead of after divisive historical tyrants?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/wynne-john-a-mcdonald-schools-1.4261433

it's a different code of conduct between gay men. they'll grab each other, slap each other, grope each other, think it's ok to randomly kiss strangers, etc. it's the culture. i guess part of being a gay guy at a gay club is being tough enough to take a random kiss, and muscular enough to push it off if you don't want it.

"why are you here then, sweetie?"

well, point taken, i guess.

i don't want to make it seem like i've been assaulted, although some people would define some of it that way. but, it's not exactly what i'm looking for in a night out, either.

so, why do i go to straight bars, again?

again: because i don't want to get hit on by men. it's the same reason that cis-women go to gay bars, just spun around the other way.

i have enough experience regarding this to know that gay men WILL grope me. every gay bar i've been to in every city i've been to one in has ended the same way, which is pushing some horny boy off me. even gay guys in straight clubs hit on me.

i'm not into it, i never have been.

i may get hit on mildly by women at straight clubs, but that's far less annoying than getting mauled by gay men. and, i frankly don't care if i piss off the straight dudes.

but, let it be clear that the point of conflict is with straight men, primarily.

yes, i've met the odd hetero ciswoman that gets catty and jealous and competitive, and they get can get downright nasty with me, but i tend to avoid spaces where those kind of women congregate - the ciswomen in the spaces i go to are mostly goths and hippies and nerds and if they're feeling this urge to destroy me then they don't act on it.

no, the primary problem comes from cismen, and there's two underlying reasons:

1) they can't fuck me, and are uncomfortable with how they're feeling about it.
2) their girlfriends are eying me, and even if they don't end up talking to me it's still giving them ideas.

i don't think i'd be better off in a lesbian bar, i'd just open up a more confusing can of worms.

i just need straight/open bars that aren't specifically trying to build a business model around access to young women. that's the situation where i'm going to run into problems, as i become a kind of poor product, as access is what the bar is actually selling. then, the straight men start bitching about it because i'm just taking up space in the bar.

detroit is going through an unfortunate police crackdown this summer. hopefully, better late night options present themselves moving into the fall.

i actually listened to this quite a bit back in 2012.

again: abstract british techno. whatever colour your skin is. they used to call it 'idm'. people don't like that. i get why. it's still useful.

but, this is what i actually want to be dancing to at 4:30 on a friday night. and i'm kind of looking forward to it.

i will state again what i said weeks or months ago...

trump can't unilaterally rip up nafta. he needs to go through congress. but, canada can do that.

we can give trump what he wants; we can help him bypass his congress. and, what is he going to give us in return?

how about a return to the initial fta, straight up? that would scratch out chapter 11. and, while i'm opposed to chapter 19, it's probably the best leverage that the canadian delegation has to keep it. then, we can build something with modern language on top of it.

it's unclear why canada would want to maintain a nafta agreement with mexico, but i'm sure they'd be willing to negotiate a new trade deal.

the universe says...

"let it be known to jessica..."

point taken. but, fuck off. i'm staying here.

let it be known to the universe: if i were to be evicted tomorrow, due to some cruel backwards legal error, the chances of me going back to ottawa are effectively zero.

i repeat: i have absolutely no interest in going back to ottawa.

the only thing that existed in ottawa that meant anything to me was my father, and he died in 2013. the truth is that i would have left ottawa years earlier if i had the money and drive, but my finances were kind of tied up with my father's, and for that reason i had to stay put. years ago, my preferred destination would have been montreal. today, i'd have probably ended up in toronto.

i'm really a big city kid; i don't like rural areas. between the christians and the wild animals, i just don't feel safe in the suburbs, let alone the countryside. on top of that, i'd end up so bored i'd almost certainly become a hopeless pothead. i'm not the type of person that would go out and explore the forest, i'm the type of person that would stay in and pout about how boring living in the sticks is.

i'm not much into thoreau, or his viewpoints. i'm really more into kropotkin. but, i'm very pro-technology. what i really want is to use technology to abolish labour and have everybody living in apartments making art.

i've mused about stopping in waterloo on my way up north, to somewhere where the air is cleaner. but, i'm still going to end up in a city. i'm going to be looking for something cheap when i do this, of course.

for right now, i have no interest in leaving windsor and would find something else here if i had to.

rule #1 of the internet: don't argue with deathtokoalas on a publicly accessible forum.

again: what is the welfare state?

the welfare state is an attempt by capital to mitigate the effects of unemployment, as they existed in the depression, and thereby strengthen the control of capital. the welfare state is a required condition when capitalism enters periods of crisis and unemployed workers are threatening unrest, general strikes and potentially a revolution.

historically, the welfare state has come about in a coalition between conservatives and socialists, and tended to be rejected by liberals, with their theory of markets, who argue that capitalism is only failing due to the corruption of the state in the first place, and unrest is best quelled by letting the markets freely produce jobs. conservatives (including the conservatives in the democratic party) have historically sided with socialists in rejecting these arguments, and instead opted to build welfare states to placate the starving masses into putting down their pitchforks. these welfare states include those built by bismarck, roosevelt and churchill. canada is actually the strange one, in that our welfare state was actually built by the liberal party (under mackenzie) - but in emulation to those built by the conservatives in england (under labour agitation, and rejected by liberals) and by the democrats in the united states (who were broadly the conservative party until the new deal, and didn't really exist on the left of the republicans until the republicans moved to their right with the southern strategy).

a smart and non-ideological president would be reacting to the unrest on the ground by expanding the welfare state first, and taking steps to create jobs second. that's what churchill would have done as much as it is what roosevelt would have done - not because it is socialist, but because it is realist in it's rejection of market utopianism.

capital has a choice in adjusting to it's own greed: placate (and reform) or repress. repression is dangerous, because it could lead to revolt. the smart thing to do is placate and reform. and, historically, plenty of conservatives have realized that.

btw, you know that marx used to do something really similar to what i'm doing here, right?

let's be clear about this.

it's not like nafta accidentally gutted the manufacturing sector; this was an entirely purposeful project, for the purpose of maximizing revenue for shareholders. this much is clear: nafta was supposed to outsource jobs to mexico. that was the purpose of the agreement.

so, when these talking heads make the circuits through the corporate media, they're right to say it was a success - it has successfully shifted production to mexico, which has weaker labour standards and weaker environmental laws to get in the way of profit maximization. that's what it intended to do, and it's been a great success in doing it. they're right. no ambiguities.

but, there were supposed to be all these other jobs created, instead. laid-off workers were supposed to retrain for higher paying jobs in more technical industries. it's never been entirely clear whether anybody really thought this would happen or not, but by now it's clear enough that it hasn't and it isn't going to. but, this was always approached as a kind of corollary, a sort of necessary cost involved in moving production to more profitable jurisdictions, which was the actual purpose of the deal.

now, we have all of these laid-off workers creating all kinds of unrest. the system is at least working in directing this unrest towards race riots instead of towards bankers. but, it's not an ideal situation. the ideal way to eliminate social unrest is to create jobs and send these people to work.

it follows that capital must acknowledge that mistakes have been made and that some steps must be taken to redistribute some wealth to prevent further unrest. in recent history, democrats have been more likely to argue for a maintenance of the welfare state to keep this unrest in check, whereas republicans have pushed through "poor laws" under the guise of welfare reform, officially under the delusions of market theory. but, we may be in the process of a role reversal.

to be clear: i don't expect trump to be a champion of anybody except the banks. but, given it's flirtation with steve bannon, the party may be more keenly aware of the need to create jobs for these people, and the corollaries of failing to do so, than you think.

this is a strawman argument; i've never heard anybody push the idea of banning components that are produced at too low of a wage.

but, mexico's low wages are not an accident. they can't unionize. the cops are thugs. these are issues that the government has to address. in a word, the problem in mexico is corruption.

would you would do, then, is introduce punitive tariffs in regions that do not apply appropriate labour standards (including collective bargaining rights and proper wage floors), as well as environmental standards. there's no banning involved. there's just pricing out

..and, if that leads to labour unrest, that's a good thing.

i'm not naive: i understand that none of these governments represents the interests of workers. what mexico really needs is a way to kickstart it's labour movement, which is currently bogged down by government regulations. if i wanted to be snide, i could say something about cutting the red tape around the rights to organize and strike.

what a nafta deal can do is actually minimal - it can lay a law of decent standards down, and exclude them through tariffs if they won't comply. it's mexican workers that then need to rise up and demand their rights. and, if you think that sounds like colonialism, you can type me up an essay explaining your viewpoint from a cushy seat in the ministry of labour rights.

again: we're not going to get a lot out of this from the top down, and we should all be aware of that. but, there is some possibility that all of this unrest is leading capital to the realization that it needs to do something about the unemployment levels that nafta has left us with. forcing mexico to acknowledge collective bargaining rights is actually a pretty basic requirement. it's easy to say that the deal shouldn't have gone through without it, except that it was actually the point, and we can see that this was a mistake (we have increasing levels of unrest, not tech jobs for all). this is in truth very much long overdue, entirely feasible and entirely attainable - and all decent people should support it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/business/economy/nafta-labor-unions-wages.html

again: you can gender me how you want, but you're setting yourself up for a fall, and i'm not going to cushion it for you: i'm going to let you break your face on the pavement.

it's really better if you just listen to what i say.

but you can learn the hard way and get hurt, if you insist.

so, anarchists on the ground have long suspected that the 'black bloc' protesters are what you call agents provocateur.

this isn't exactly a conspiracy theory. it seems like it is in each instance, but it's more of a question of trying to identify a known phenomenon. this is something that was invented by bismarck and has been utilized by police forces in north america for a very long time. the black bloc in the quebec city ftaa protests was actually 'doxxed', although you wouldn't have used that term at the time - but it is a factual statement to state that there were black bloc agents working for the state at those protests.

so, we know that there are going to be agents at protests, the hard part is identifying them. but, it's not actually hard to identify them, if you've been to a few protests - especially if you're the meek tranny that they want to move out of the way. when a cop grabs you by the arm, you know it.

it's tempting to say something about how this is the stupidity i warned you against. but, this is clearly the work of a provocateur. and, the more important thing to draw attention to is the threat that the government may use the situation to roll back even more civil liberties, because that is probably the reason that this happened in the first place.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3683586/counter-protesters-clash-with-police-in-quebec-city/?utm_source=GlobalToronto&utm_medium=Facebook

fwiw, i think that the stories of bannon's influence were greatly exaggerated: trump only ever saw him as a pragmatic and cynical means to win and hold power, and now that this is crumbling, he's served his purpose and is out the door.

the idea that bannon had any real influence is not upheld by any evidence; it seems to me like it was less about bannon controlling trump, and more about the banking wing of the republican party using bannon as a useful idiot.

"you'll be the first to go..."

i actually remember the first day i walked into classes pretty well. my first class was calculus 102, which was a full year credit long course for honours math students. i was walking into a math/physics double major. there were a couple of pure math students, but it was just the general elite math course, meaning there were other double majors: math/economics, math/chemistry, math/comp. sci. i think there was even a math/psych student. there were no engineers, except the ones at the butt of the jokes.

it was a small first year class by university standards - maybe 40 students. the small class size was a consequence of the course being set aside specifically for honours math students, that is students that were expected to carry forward in honours math courses. i ended up switching, but a lot of these students had obscure degree requirements and would have ended up graduating alone in their classes.

it was in a room that wasn't any larger than a high school classroom.

i was expecting a room full of absolute nerds. what that meant, to me, was an abstraction of the berkeley stereotype; not pocket protectors, but pink floyd shirts. more broadly, i was expecting to meet a bunch of kids that didn't care about social expectations and didn't adhere to norms and had spent most of their lives as outcasts as a consequence of it.

i wore a pair of disshelved jeans and a loose-fitting plain white t-shirt with a faint mustard stain on it. i didn't bother showering or shaving.

i was kind of mortified when i walked in and instead found a bunch of extremely rich kids wearing exceedingly expensive clothes and talking about network television.

if that day had turned out differently, if i had met the nerds i was hoping for, i might have engaged. but, the fact is that i should have turned around right then and there - because i knew it, in my gut.

i've said this before - if i could go back in time, i wouldn't study an academic subject, at all. rather, i'd take the money and invest it and live off the dividends.

my school years were really spent mostly focused on music production. second year was particularly bad; i rarely went to class, and didn't bother studying until the day before the exam. i say i didn't get along with anybody in the class, but i didn't really try very hard - i just didn't have any interest. i'd say i spent maybe 5 hours a week on my school work through second year, and 100 hours a week working on music. it was abundantly clear where my interests were, but i had to make counter-intuitive choices to maximize my ability to explore those interests - i didn't have the freedom to just sit and create, i had to either go to school or get a job. getting a job would have been far more time consuming than going to school, so i "went to school" out of necessity (but didn't actually go to school).  i didn't even want to be there at all. there was actually one surreal period where i spent more time helping my dad with his homework (he was taking a business management course through correspondence) than i did doing my own.

any decisions i made about labour were always made to maximize the amount of time i could spend recording. so, the actual reason i went to university was that it meant i didn't have to go to work (and, i didn't have to go to work because i refused to go to school if i had to go to work, anyways). you could maybe feel badly for my father about the whole thing, as he was just constantly trying to coerce what he (mis)understood as reason out of me, and i just kept coming up with these responses that clearly broke his heart. but, i wasn't going to go be an engineer to make my dad proud, or something. i'd rather fucking kill myself.

i didn't really have a plan for the future. i mean, i guess i hoped the music would be successful; i think i knew it never would be. i didn't even want to be a superstar, i just wanted to be able to survive by doing what i actually cared about. but, my long term plans were always based on the assumption that it would eventually work out, and i'd be able to find ways to survive in the mean time.

i never had any intention of using my education to get a job; it was just a way to avoid going to work and maximize my time spent on art. so, the amount of time that i spent doing school work was in truth always quite minimal - and, my emotional and intellectual investment into it was in truth always quite scarce.

if you're going to meet me at a bar and talk about things i've put on the internet, i'd rather we talk about the music. it's the music that i've put my actual effort into. it's the music that i've tried to publish. it's the music that i actually care about. it's the music that i want you to interpret me through.

i have not published any math or science and do not expect that i ever will. i'm not upset about this. but, there is still a lot of discography to work through.

this paradox is particularly useful in demonstrating my argument that physics is essentially impossible to do until we understand space.

put simply, we need the following work flow:

1. understand the space we exist in (space in a kantian or descartian sense, not outer space).
2. start math over from scratch, with a proper understanding of space (in fact, we can find most of the work already done).
3. reconstruct the physics using the math that now exists, which properly understands space.

what we have right now is something more like:

1. do physics that needs complicated math to understand space.
2. ask the mathematicians for it.
3. rely on their expertise that it's "right".

meanwhile, the mathematicians are being perfectly open about the fact that the math they're doing makes no attempt to verify whether it's valid in the universe we inhabit or not. nor do the mathematicians care if the math they're doing is true in this universe or not, either. the circle completes: that's a physics problem.

there was this argument advanced by the likes of kant that math is the perfect representation of perfect knowledge, and philosophers actually ran pretty far with it, but, while kant was writing, gauss (a very competent and very famous mathematician) was actually in the process of disproving exactly what kant thought was perfect knowledge. oops. regardless, this kantian delusion has really set hold in the minds of physicists, for some reason. you'd think physicists would listen to gauss instead of kant! not so, though.

(of course, physicists listen to gauss instead of kant every time they do relativity. but, as they're doing relativity, they repeat the kantian lie that mathematics is some kind of language of nature. the problem is that nobody makes physicists study their own history, or take a credit worth of philosophy classes.)

the math itself is a model. that's what mathematicians will tell you: math is not a perfect description of space, and nature doesn't adhere to it as a script, but is merely a model to better understand it. but, it's a non-empirical model. and, we know from experience that non-empirical models always fail.

maybe you've heard of this, maybe you haven't. if the system of mathematics allows for this, that system is obviously not modeling our universe very well. we should consequently expect that any physics that relies on a flawed system of mathematics will also be flawed; that a system of physics based on a mathematical model that is full of contradictions and paradoxes will also be full of contradictions and paradoxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox

ok, this is my embed, i just have to wait for it to exist:

this might be a better workaround to youtube dropping flash, as it still seems to work for embeds.

let's see...

that one doesn't embed the playlist. let me try this:



it doesn't like the idea of embedding the watch later. this is just proof of concept:


the embed was wrong, this works:


maybe i should try again for the watch later..no...

what exactly are we importing via st. john's and why aren't we producing it in a way that requires less transportation?

the companies surely realize that this is just going to make them less competitive. but, we ought to be trying to reduce trans-oceanic imports, anyways. if it makes local goods more competitive, that's a good thing.

but, it's a really dark reflection on this company that they expect some kind of tax revolt over measures designed to save the lives of endangered whales. that's a very disturbing view of human priorities.

better yet: why don't we boycott oceanex?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/oceanex-right-whales-surcharge-1.4252721

aug 18-19 vlog, where i decided not to waste the weather by essentially wasting the night.

to be clear: modern physics has obvious engineering applications, and that's fine. but, i really don't care about that.

what i care about is an epistemology - a way to understand the universe. as mentioned, i realized quickly that i'm not a scientist: i don't think like one. the few friends i had were always musicians; i never got along well with the kids in these science classes i took through high school, but i guess i thought things would be different when i got to university (they weren't). it's not like i found a group of like-minded people in the math department, either, but there were at least a couple of hopeless social outcasts in the math program at carleton that i could smoke and make misanthropic wisecracks with.

the reality is that i would have probably found more like-minded people in the philosophy department if i had bothered to go over and look, because i was approaching science as a philosopher rather than as a scientist - i wanted all the knowledge to myself, with little interest in actually doing anything with it.

i mean, people asked me what i was going to do with a math degree, and it always struck me as a stupid question: as though the purpose of going to school is to prepare yourself for your place as a cog in the system, or to better the world or something. it didn't even cross my mind. i didn't have an answer, because i'd never really thought about it. i just wanted a search for knowledge.

at the end of the process, i resigned myself to existing in too primitive of a space in human evolution to get the kind of answers i want. so, just hand me my guitar, instead.

but, i'm not going to deny the engineering applications of modern physics. it works well enough from that perspective, even if i think it's up against a really hard block in the near future.

but, as a way to actually understand the universe, modern physics really fails terribly in producing satisfying conclusions - and that's all i ever cared about.

but, let's say high school physics was all modern physics - let's say i went through a curriculum that didn't even mention classical physics. no apples falling on people's heads, just straight to relativity in a curved universe and god playing dice at the subatomic level. would i have enrolled in a physics program in the first place?

emphatically: no. i enrolled to study a newtonian universe.

i'd be a lot less cynical about physics if they had just told me the fucking truth in the first place. but, i would have probably studied biology, instead.

put simply: they lied to me three times, then they put something completely preposterous in front of me and asked me to believe it, and i simply didn't - instead, i walked away.

and, i've never regretted it.

but, i need to be explicit: i didn't believe it. well, how many times do you expect you can lie to me before i tell you that?

there is an underlying theory. give me a call when you work it out.

i don't know if they still teach kids classical physics or not, but i can tell you that i didn't want to let go of something i understood well for something that struck me as past the point of absurd and into the point of dystopic disinformation. i mean, i realized pretty quickly that i wasn't a scientist. i never had that quest for discovery that i guess a lot of kids had; i didn't have this zeal to fix the errors or solve the mysteries, i was just frustrated that i had to take the same course every year because it was wrong last year. rather than take the information as it was presented, fully cognizant that i'd eventually be told most of it is wrong, i found myself trying to get ahead of the program and figure out what they were going to tell me is actually wrong. the intent may have been to foster skepticism, but it instead left me unable to even take any of it seriously. i went for the assumptions nobody touches: photons obviously have mass, but you're assuming they don't, so then what?

a scientist would look at all of this as a challenge to work through. i wasn't remotely interested. what i wanted was to understand the truth, not to spend my time doing experiments and guessing what assumption was useful and what wasn't.

math offered me something that modern physics couldn't: it let me search for truth, rather than leave me guessing at approximations. but, i could have switched into math and taken physics courses on the side. i didn't. and, the reason i didn't was that i hated doing the labs; i hated using my hands, i hated doing the actual science. my electives were actually mostly math courses.

i've never fully shaken the idea that what they're teaching at the universities is a distraction, and that the government is carefully pulling kids out of classes to teach them the actual science. that's how little sense that quantum physics made to me: it struck me as a conspiracy against reason.

i don't want to live in a world defined by random probabilities. i want a theory of physics. and, i'm not interested in learning about the quantum theory, for that reason - whether it is true or not.